Posts Tagged ‘New Wave’

Beige Palace – Making Sounds for Andy

Posted: 4 November 2023 in Albums
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Human Worth – 10th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

I know it’s not really cool to make that you’re cool because you’re in the know or whatever. A few years ago, it was the way of the hipster, but after what felt like forever, they seems to have disappeared, probably because everyone grew beards during lockdown, so the hipsters had to shave and resort to telling people they were wearing a beard before the pandemic or something. Nevertheless, I can’t help but take some satisfaction from having observed Beige Palace from their very dawn, at their first show in the now-lost CHUNK rehearsal space-cum-gig venue way back in the spring of 2016. The place was a bugger to get to from the train station, being practically in the middle of nowhere you’d actually want to go, and to describe it as basic would be polite. But what CHUNK provided was a place where anything went. It was BYOB, pay what you can, and it was a hub of creativity which lay at the heart of the DIY scene in Leeds. And so it was that Beige Palace – perhaps not quite a supergroup at the time, but simply people in other bands (Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe (Thank), Kelly Bishop (Gloomy Planets) and Ant Bedford (Cattle)) doing something different together – came to be.

They’ve come a way since then, notably with slots at The Brudenell supporting Mclusky and also Shellac, with a personal thumbs-up from god himself, Steve Albini. There’s likely a number of reasons for this, apart from the simple fact that Beige palace are bloody good, a major one being that they make angular noise without being overly abrasive, preferring instead to push sounds that are slated, skewed, imbalanced, jarring, jolting. This is right up front at the start of this, their second long-player, with ‘Not Waving’, a scuzzy collision of Shellac, The Fall, early Pavement, and Truman’s Water. The bass is right up in the mix, the vocals down low, and everything about it is absolutely wrong in terms of conventional sound. You can imagine sound engineers all around the country shaking their heads and saying “but that bass is just booming… it’s drowning out the vocals… and the guitar, maybe you should take the treble down a bit?” But Beige palace’s sound isn’t conventional, and they’re not going for radio-friendly pop tunes.

The album’s title appears to make a nod to XTC, and calls to mind the band’s hit ‘Making Plans for Nigel’ (surely one of the greatest snappy tunes of the New wave era) and the fact that Andy Partridge was co-frontman of XTC. Coincidence? Am I joining dots and identifying references which simply don’t exist? Possibly, but then again, for all the wrongness, the off-key and the off-kilter, there are some neat hooks to be found leaping out from the rumbling basslines and loping drums. ‘Local Sandwich’ is representative: the rhythm section strolls along kicking a loose groove where the bass and drums are seemingly playing alternate to one another, the discordant sprechgesang vocals of the verses overlap one another, making for a tense combination – and then out of nowhere, pow! Hook! And then a squalling climax.

The genius of the songwriting lies in its unpredictability: for as much as the compositions are largely built around repetitive motifs, hammering away at the same nagging loop for minutes at a time, adding and subtracting elements such as keyboard or guitar, they’re prone to veer off somewhere else or otherwise change tempo or burst into a scratchy blast of noise at precisely the moment you least expect – and just when you expect something unexpected, a song like ‘My Brother Bagagwaa’ doesn’t do it. They’re as keen to explore the space in between the notes as the notes themselves, and there are numerous passages on Making Sounds for Andy where they pull things back to stark minimalism. This makes the crackling bursts of distortion and clattering drums all the more impactful.

Leeds has a habit of birthing weird bands who are nosy but not noise, with the legendary Bilge Pump and the should-have-been-legendary Bearfoot Beware providing a brace of examples – but Beige Palace are very much their own band. Making Sounds for Andy is a bold celebration of ramshackle lo-fi, delivered in such a way as to hit hard. It’s got ‘underground classic’ all over it.

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Watch: ‘Werewolves’ by Sky Lions

Posted: 26 October 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Portland post-punk alt-rockers SKY LIONS presents ‘Werewolves’, a wild offering from their debut album Inside The Circle. The duo is made up of Radio Sloan and Outer Stace, who over the years have performed with or as a part of Courtney Love’s band, Peaches’ band, Le Tigre, The Need, Time Bitch and Photona.

Sky Lions’ musical collaboration began in childhood, before they were aware of any rules. Outer Stace says, “’Werewolves’, in part, is about the idea of shifting from our outer selves to our inner selves, the fleeting peace that can bring; transformation and adaptation… So, the art direction possibilities were pretty endless. It was a lot of fun to create the different versions of ourselves that we could be.”

Watch the video here:

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“It’s like a metamorphic reality of death and the future. It feels like things we’ve seen,” says Radio Sloan. “Our sound is that of accepting existence for all its flaws. Sky Lions has a darkness that isn’t entirely heavy metal, post-punk or darkwave. Rather, it’s a culmination of who we have been, who we currently are, and how we interpret the world around us. Moving within that world is the core of our musical expression.”

From early days experimenting with instruments to their evolution into Sky Lions, they’ve carved a niche where innovation, music, feminism, Trans/queer identity and horror come together. Sky Lions weaves together the threads of life’s absurdity, unquestionable magic and tragedy. Their trans / queer / feminist lens adds a relatability of lives lived and times to come, creating an immersive sonic journey that challenges the mind and ears. Through genre-blurring compositions and evocative lyrics, they hope to channel their ethos into a call for transformation! They hope that their songs challenge stereotypes, and ignite conversation.

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Listen: ‘Panic’ by The Neuro Farm

Posted: 9 October 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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‘Panic’ is the new single from DC goth rockers The Neuro Farm. The song is inspired by a childhood episode of fevered delirium, and it will be featured on their next album planned for 2024.

The Neuro Farm is a darkwave gothic rock band based in Washington DC. Combining vocal harmony with soaring violin melodies, driving rhythm guitar, and ethereal sonic textures, their music has been described as hauntingly beautiful. The Neuro Farm draws on influences such as Joy Division, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sigur Ros, Chelsea Wolfe, Portishead, and Rammstein.

Listen here:

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Girls Under Glass – Backdraft

Posted: 21 May 2023 in Albums
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Dependent Records – 2nd June 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Now in their twenty-seventh year, Girls Under Glass return after an extended break – of some seventeen years – with a new album that wasn’t wholly planned. As the bio notes, explain, when they started composing some new tracks for an EP to round off a planned boxset of their complete works, ‘The fire reignited and songs kept coming… [they] understood that their batteries had recharged to bursting point after a 17-year break and the projected EP turned into a full-length.

The trouble with being forerunners and progenitors is that time catches up. What was innovative at one time becomes assimilated, absorbed: ‘influential’ becomes commonplace, however much you keep moving. And while Backdraft shows that Girls Under Glass have progressed, it also shows how external elements have, too – even within the spheres of post-punk and goth, which on the face of things, haven’t evolved all that much. Emerging bands are still emulating The Cure and The Sisters of mercy circa 1985, and oftentimes if feels as if these are genres locked in time – but then, the same is also true of punk, and contemporary grunge acts.

At least Girls Under Glass can lay justified claim to being there at the time and laying the foundation stones for the sound that endures over thirty years on, and they’re fully accepting that this new outing draws on the sound and sensations of their previously active years in the 80s and 90s. ‘Night Kiss’ brings all the synth-goth vibes where early New Order and third-wave goth acts like Suspiria meet, but there’s much to chew on across the ten songs on Backdraft. ‘Tainted’ – which features Mortiis on guest vocals – has a more industrial feel – but that’s industrial in the way that Rosetta Stone drew on Nine Inch Nails for Tyranny of Inaction than Ministry. It’s got grit and magnetic bubbling synths and some hard grooves, but the aggression is fairly restrained.

Single cut ‘We Feel Alright’ has a vintage vibe and sits in the bracket of ‘uplifting goth’ – it may not bee recognised as a thing, but it sure is, and propelled by a pumping disco beat, it’s one of those songs that brims with an energy that makes you want to raise your arms and your face to the sky as you’re carried away on the driving rhythm and expansive synths and guitars.

The six-minute ‘No Hope No Fear’ blissfully ventures into Disintegration-era Cure stylings, with a bold, cinematic approach, while ‘Everything Will Die’ is a quintessential slab of Numanesque electrogoth It’s uptempo, even poppy, but it’s dark, and if the Hi-NRG pumping of ‘Endless Nights’ is a shade cliché, but they redeem the dip with the sparse six-minute ‘Heart on Fire’ with its sepulchral synths, before erupting into an epic climax that’s like a shoegaze / synthwave take of Fields of the Nephilim.

Ultimately, Backdraft is a solid album: its roots are deeply retro, and it’s not one hundred percent hit, but it’s a solid addition to the catalogue of a band whose longevity speaks for itself.

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Mules – Illusions of Joy

Posted: 17 May 2023 in Singles and EPs
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HalfMeltedBrain Records – 9th June 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

They may have only formed in 2020 during lockdown, but Brighton’s heavy post-punk noisemakers Mules (not to be confused with 90s US punk blues band, Mule) have already racked up three digital single releases before this six-track cassette EP. And while three of the tracks here are the preceding singles (with a studio recording of the live debut, ‘I Think We Need to Talk’, Illusions of Joy stands as a taut, cohesive document.

Their bio pitches their sound as being ‘equal parts dissonant and melodic, with a tight rhythm section providing insistent motorik grooves and angular rhythms’, adding that ‘In the tradition of Mark E Smith, the vocals are generally spoken, with very little concession to melody. Occasionally they escalate into a desperate and emotional yelp. With roots in the punk scene, Mules take influence from the first wave of post-punk, indie-rock, 90s noise-rock, and various more contemporary bands such as Parquet Courts, Metz, and Gilla Band.’

At the risk of repeating myself, shit times do at least make for decent music, and it’s no coincidence that the social and political landscape in which we find ourselves, which bears remarkable parallels to Thatcher’s Britain, is spawning a wave of disaffected musical voices. It’s not simply that the contemporary crop are aping the sound and feel of the first generation of punk and new wave acts because it feels fitting: the music itself is a means of articulating those knotty emotions that are a conglomeration of anger and frustration and the sense of powerlessness in the face of a need for change. Angularity, discord, dissonance, noise; these are the sonic vehicles which carry the sentiments sonically.

And so it is that while the primary grist to Mules’ mill is ‘everyday life in Tory austerity Britain’, they also pull on ‘broader themes, which draw on Tommy’s MA thesis, such as cultural hegemony, global political economy, and systems of control.’

There’s something particularly pleasing about hearing the words ‘cultural hegemony’ in the first verse of the first song on a record. Because as much as we live in shit times on so many levels, a real bugbear – and a genuine issue – is the dumbing down of culture; we have a government who openly attack intellectualism and deride ‘experts’, who refuse to engage in debate and view critical thinking as unhealthy – and in their tenuous position of power which serves only to protect their own interests – and, specifically, wealth – it is. And so it is that ‘Ergonomic Living’ takes its lead from Marxist social critique, and while the verses are defined by an insistent beat and wandering guitar, it all explodes into a roaring chorus. I’m reminded rather of Bilge Pump, and this is very much a good thing.

‘The Things We Learn in Books’ spews lists of theory against some driving guitars, and the urgency of the delivery is gripping and exhilarating. ‘Lonely Bored and High’ is the most Fall-like of the songs, but there’s a dubby element to it as well as spacious atmosphere, rendering it as much Bauhaus as The Specials, and again, it rips into a raging chorus. Fuck, these guys have such a knack for dynamics and tempo changes, it’s hard to respond in any way other than pumping your fists, because YEAHHHHH!!! FUCK, YEAHHHH!

‘I Think We Need to Talk’ is mathy, messy, disorientating, hypnotic, and ‘Clapping for Carers’ largely speaks for itself. Claps don’t pay bills, motherfuckers, and it shouldn’t be volunteers distributing limp packaged sandwiches and bags if crisps to the people sitting for ten hours or more in A&E units up and down the country (this one’s particularly sore for me, but we’ll save that for another time and just leave it that hearing a song like this really revs me).

Feeling angry and frustrated but disenfranchised and disempowered? Mules speak to, and for, you.

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Watch: ‘Waiting For Your Good Days’ by Red Telephone

Posted: 19 February 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Cardiff post-punk outfit Red Telephone are set to release their highly anticipated debut album Hollowing Out on the 31st March 2023. The only single taken from it ‘Waiting For Your Good Days’ is out now.

Hailing from Cardiff, Red Telephone’s richly layered alt-rock could have emanated from a club in Blade Runner’s dystopian LA – combining angular guitars, Krautrock-inspired rhythms and New Wave-tinged synths with infectious pop sensibilities. Drawing on post punk and synth pop influences, the band has been catching the attention of DJs across BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 1, Absolute Radio and Radio X; with comparisons to the likes of MGMT, Super Furry Animals, Mitski and Berlin-era Bowie being drawn. The band have recently appeared at BBC 6 Music Fringe Festival, Focus Wales, Swn Festival, Other Voices and Llangollen Fringe, supporting Warmduscher. With previous single releases on Welsh-based labels Libertino Records and the Popty-Ping Recording Company, the band’s highly anticipated debut album is set to be released in March 2023.

Watch the video here:

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Listen: ‘Waiting For Your Good Days’ by Red Telephone

Posted: 23 January 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Cardiff post-punk outfit Red Telephone are set to release their highly anticipated debut album Hollowing Out on the 31st March 2023. The only single taken from it ‘Waiting For Your Good Days’ is out on the 20th January.

Listen to ‘Waiting For Your Good Days’ here:

Hailing from Cardiff, Red Telephone’s richly layered alt-rock could have emanated from a club in Blade Runner’s dystopian LA – combining angular guitars, Krautrock-inspired rhythms and New Wave-tinged synths with infectious pop sensibilities. Drawing on post punk and synth pop influences, the band has been catching the attention of DJs across BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 1, Absolute Radio and Radio X; with comparisons to the likes of MGMT, Super Furry Animals, Mitski and Berlin-era Bowie being drawn. The band have recently appeared at BBC 6 Music Fringe Festival, Focus Wales, Swn Festival, Other Voices and Llangollen Fringe, supporting Warmduscher. With previous single releases on Welsh-based labels Libertino Records and the Popty-Ping Recording Company, the band’s highly anticipated debut album is set to be released in March 2023.

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Photo by Faith Clarke

Distant Animals – Everything Is Fucked And We Are All Going To Die

Posted: 27 December 2022 in Albums
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Panurus Productions – 2nd December 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Panurus Productions are renowned for their favouring of pop and jaunty indie on their catalogue, but as the title suggests, they’ve really excelled with the saccharine-sweet, shimmery Christmas bauble stylings on this December release by Distant Animals, the vehicle for Daniel Alexander Hignell.

The accompanying blurb sets the pitch for ‘A scuzzed out synth/noise/punk affair… straddling a range of genres but never settling on any one of them for long, shifting around with an angry, anxious energy directed at our bleak status quo.’

Granted, this does mean it’s nowhere near as abrasive as recent releases from Trauma Bond or as dark as Carnivorous Plants, this is a hybrid form that coalesces to convey the sound of post-industrial nihilism.

The synths drive and dominate the sound, and they’re layered into thick, foggy swirls pitched against grinding, fuzzy-as-fuck sequenced bass and a drum machine that’s largely submerged beneath the swelling squall. The opener, the eight-and-a-half-minute ‘Greetings from the MET Office’ builds and builds into an immense wall of sound, the guitar adding layers off noise and feedback rather than melody. There is a tune in there, somewhere, and vocals, too, buried in a blitzkrieg that sounds like Depeche Mode covered by My Bloody Valentine and then remixed by Jesu or Dr Mix and the Remix.

‘Phase Down and Sweat to Death’ gets dubby, with samples and snippets cut in and out of the mix, and actually finds a murky, echo-drenched groove in places, before veering off on myriad detours.

As titles such as the title track and ‘Panning For Shit In The Shallow End’ intone, this is far from a celebratory collection, with the delicate and brittle-feeling ‘Hegel’s Violin’ sounding like it could have been penned by The Cure circa Seventeen Seconds, and yes, it’s fair to say that there are what some may refer to as ‘gothic’ elements to the brooding sound.

If songs titles like ‘Fondly Remembering When Primark was a Woolworths’ and ‘They Didn’t Have Snowflakes In 76’ might suggest that Hignell’s been gorging on the Memberberries, but on the evidence there is, buried away in trudging industrial sub-zero trudges and stark, oppressive abstraction, this couldn’t be further from the truth, and we can appreciate these compositions as critiques of the multi-billion-pound nostalgia industry and Brexit Britain, where narrow-minded twats get dewy-eyed all over social media reminiscing over false memories of a golden age that never was. ‘They don’t make ‘em like they used to…’ It’s patent bullshit of course, but so many subscribe to this that, well, it must be true that The BBC haven’t screened Monty Python in decades because they’re woke lefties (and nothing to do that after airing it in 2019 for the fiftieth anniversary, the rights were purchased by NetFlix), and Stranger Things is only good because, well, it’s like The Goonies, isn’t it?

‘Panning for Shit’ is sparse, minimal electro that borders on Krautrock, and is the sound of drowning, not waving from our turd-encircled island, and there are many elements of this album which seem to align with the bleak perspectives and sounds of early industrial acts like Throbbing Gristle. But, to be clear, these are simply touchstones, rather than direct comparisons. Everything Is Fucked And We Are All Going To Die may evoke a sense of familiarity and a strange sense of déjà-vu, but ultimately presents a unique view and amalgamation of influences and stylistic references, and herein lies its true strength.

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The Yets – The Yets

Posted: 18 December 2022 in Singles and EPs
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12th December 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

The eponymous debut EP by South Carolina indie pop-rock duo The Yets is steeped in the tropes of quintessential vintage alternative pop, absorbing a range of influences, while keeping a clear eye on classic and ultimately accessible forms – embracing Fleetwood Mac and Cocteau Twins in equal measure, as the press release suggests with remarkable accuracy.

Robin Wilson has a superb voice, delicate, emotive, easy on the ear, and at the same time rich and gutsy. It’s key to the sound of The Yets, and the six songs on this debut EP really showcase both her versatility and that of their songwriting.

There’s a weird booming sound – not quite a beat, not quite a bass note – that cuts through the mellow drift of ‘Waterline’, and it’s one of those things that once you’re attuned to it, you can’t detune, like the duck in Whigfield’s ‘Saturday Night’ or the cowbell on ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’, but if you can ignore it, it’s a superbly-executed song with a clean guitar chug that keep it moving along nicely while the lead guitar chimes and washes melodically.

‘Remember’ is perfection, a layered, easy alt-rock tune that’s Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’ and it floats along in a dreamy drift that closes out with a delicate guitar solo.

They strip things right back for ‘Lesser Evil’, which swings between brooding indie and moody post-punk with hints of Siouxsie, before spinning into ethereal shoegaze territory on the dreamy ‘Letter to a Boy’, which really does find the band revelling in the misty ethereal shadows of Cocteau Twins.

‘Fades to Grey’ makes an obvious reference to Visage, and the band’s 80s leanings are on clear display, but that’s where the connection severs: this is a smooth, atmospheric rippling piece with chiming, echo-heavy guitar that owes much to Disintegration-era Cure, and ‘Happy Now’ builds on that thickly atmospheric sound with a loping rhythm and layers of vocals that really fill out the sound as the guitars and it’s the most overtly goth song of the set.

With a broad pallet of tuneful wistfulness and textured, layered instrumentation, coupled with some smart and sensitive production, The Yets have landed with a seriously accomplished debut: there’s a lot happening here, and there’s a significant range but at the same time a cohesive feel to it.

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The Yets 4 - photo by Gordon Backman

Photo: Gordon Backman

Frenchy and the Punk – Come in and Play

Posted: 8 October 2022 in Singles and EPs
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6th October 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Most Dinosaur Jr fans are aware of the prehistory – the band’s primordial swamps, or whatever, which saw the band emerge from she ashes of hardcore punk act Deep Wound, although significantly less seems to have been made of the band’s reunions in 2004 and 2013. But no matter – perhaps more should be being made of the work of Deep Wound’s less celebrated co-founder Scott Helland, who is one half of Frenchy and the Punk, along with Samantha Stephenson.

There’s no getting around it: it’s an awful name. Kinda corny, with connotations off Grease, it’s one of those monikers that’s so cliché It’s probably fictitious. But no, they’re real, very real, and according to their bio, ‘the duo thrive in their trademark blend of post-punk and dark folk music’. And they’ve been going for a while: their upcoming album, Zen Ghost will be their seventh long-player.

And that they do. ‘Come In and Play’ is pitched as an upbeat Siouxsie-esque delight, is the second enchanting single from their forthcoming Zen Ghost album, following the lead track ‘Mon Souvenir’. Their seventh long-player record, this will be released via the EA Recordings label on October 28th.

‘Come in and Play’ is layered, elegant, haunting fashion that combines elements of trad goth with folk, landing somewhere between Siouxsie, Skeletal family, and All About Eve. With picked acoustic guitar providing texture and detail, it’s driven by a solid bass groove. The overall feel is quite the contradiction – it’s an alternative rock song with a paired-back arrangement and quite spartan, brittle production that solidly recreates the essence of 1984.

On the surface, it’s a simple, song, but scratch to the next layer, and there’s plenty going on and then some, sonically, musically, and emotively. Stephenson’s vocal is outstanding, and the real attention-stealer here as she swoops and soars and switches from angelic drifting to a full-lunged expellation, while swiping various shades and stylistic elements in between.

‘Come in and Play’ is both haunting and confident. It’s one of those songs where you absorb the atmosphere more than you absorb any instant hook, and that’s ok – more than ok.

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